In one of your projects at Zagat, you curated a gallery of immaterial art. Can you tell us a little bit about what took you there and how it worked. >> For many years, I worked around concepts one way or the other related to economy. In the sense that maybe feeling the oppression or the rigidness of economic rules in our society, I tried to imagine ways of playing, or inventing new rules in fact, or basically, we were changing the existing rules and using them for different gains. So, one of the rules, for example, of the art market is that when you buy something, you buy some thing. That has a clear material definition. Something that you can, in fact, move from one place to the other, the artist's studio or the gallery, to your house, collection, or whatever, and place somewhere. Now all this is related to materiality of an art work. So when I simply thought to the idea that you can also invent, create an economy for art that has nothing material. Nothing that stays that can be this place from one place to another but tried their best with no experience. And I think that teaching in this way has a relation with this kind of method reality because teaching has a form of direct experience of the meaning. Not mediated by an art object, by a painting, by a sculpture. But it's the direct relation between, especially for artist's teachers like us. >> Yes. >> And the students or the participants or, let's say, the interested person. >> Collaborators. >> Collaborators. >> Yes. >> Well all the philosophical and topological reflections on the change of labor in post Freudian or post capitalist society from the material production to the intellectual production. As being accompanied so to say, by a rising awareness of the artists of these kind of issues. So more and more artists have made, gone towards performances, actions to what's given, what defined creation of situation. So the situations as a moment in which people relate with each other and produce meaning and create meaning, rather than a moment when someone makes something material. So this give the [INAUDIBLE] was saying things like this. That in the 50s, was an early, quite early awareness of the changing condition of labor. Now, of course in the internet era, there is sort of an extra change, new change of this kind of condition. Its like a radical situation of in materialization of the work and also with art work. >> You know, one phenomenon that we do cover in the lecture is how social practice or social engaged art, relational studies, whatever term we use for this type of work, has become so mainstream that now even in the market it has value. >> Yeah. >> [CROSSTALK] this long lineage from a few decades, it was unthinkable. Even though people were thinking Ideas. It was not really applicable to an art fair or something. But now we have artists like Tino Sehgal. >> Of course. >> Selling their. >> Of course, of course, of course. >> Insisting that there should be no object, no contract. You know, like, so. >> Sure, sure, sure. >> How does that, as someone who has for many years observed this transformation, how do you relate to this more kind of mainstream version of the capitalist art market? >> Well I still think that, I mean it's completely normal that the capitalist organization in a way absorbs more and more of new possibilities of rules that people, that we, not only the artists of course, but normal people. That was already Mark's theory. Create, as their own reaction, as their own response, to the rigidness of the existing rules. Nevertheless, I do think what the artist can do is continuing inventing new rules. And I must say, that it'll it's an experiment from from 2007, I think, and I'm also trying to go beyond that, and trying to invent new games. I must say in the last few years I've more interested maybe in the free distribution of art works, rather than in selling. So, just one possible gain of using the existing rules of economy, such as the transaction artwork, the rest was money, to, in fact, invent new gains. I think the main thing is exactly for me, is the fact that not having an artistic background, I always have felt a little bit handicapped in producing real artworks, paintings, culture, whatever. So the idea that everybody can be an artist or everybody is an artist as [INAUDIBLE] was saying, has always in a way been a point of reference for me. And finding this kind of thought that are thoughts that are apparently completely unuseful, that maybe have to do with the childish production of invention of games, in fact. I think it gave me the opportunity to see a mental production that is certainly common to everybody. So, I do believe that every one of us, every one, either be an artist or not, has their kind of thoughts. Maybe, in many cases, they are not considered, and just discarded and forgotten. >> Yes. >> That's what happens in many, many cases with dreams, same thing. But I think that everyone has potentially that kind of mental production. So at the same time for me, the known functional thoughts are a sort of a tank of ideas where everybody could contribute their own functional thoughts, but also thank our ideas, as you were saying, from which everybody can take one, and make it, or even realize that he or she was already doing that by chance, you know by. I've done this, or I've thought this. So to me, the interesting thing is that exactly that moment when there is a connection with one's own life experience ideas. >> Yeah. >> Well, I think that everyone can contribute to certain projects or certain processes of production and everyone can play in this kind of games that I was mentioning. And of course different ages offer different ways of approaching things. The fact is that I think that art, I mean for me art is that field where [INAUDIBLE], unprofessionality, mistakes are somehow possibly given value too. So, if you liberate the field where we are playing from the idea that something is necessarily good and something is necessarily wrong or something is professional, unprofessional. >> Beautiful or ugly. >> Beautiful or ugly. Useful, valuable, etc. And you just invent games. You can use something that is evidently un-useful to play us in a game. You're going to need something ugly. >> Mm hm? >> You know you might need something ugly or wrong. >> Mm-hm? >> For a specific game. And the importance is to find the situation again. When, where some people can address things and in this case I would say for example, working not only with children, but also with older people and even with people with conditions that are problematic such as, Alzheimer's for example, can be extremely interesting. And I think for me and all the other people involved, but also the general public, exactly because you see how, in any case, humans even in such a bad condition, can contribute something. Even you see that the idea itself of forgetting something can be interesting, can learn you. I'm sorry, can teach you something. So, it's the same thing. It's not that In order to take advantage of a painting, the only way is to look at it. You can't take advantage of a painting even touching it, or maybe even making it disappear. >> Mm-hm.
